Medicine
by Roadstergal
Summary: An alternate resolution to Cat's problem in Identity Within. Some odd slash with Cat and Rimmer. Rimmer and Lister in further chapters.
1. Chapter 1

Some might consider it callous to have a beer and a curry and fall asleep when your best friend was dying. But Lister saw nothing wrong with it; why make himself sleepy and upset when there was nothing more he could do? He had visited Cat to keep him company until Cat had irately asked Kryten to throw Lister out. He had forked over every nude wrestling video he had brought with him from Red Dwarf. They were seeking out a little pussy for his pussy. What more was there for him to do? He dozed off with a lager in his armpit and a foil container of curry balanced on his chest.

He woke up an indeterminate period of time later. He dipped his finger into the congealed sauce and sucked on it, the fire bringing him fully to alertness. He dumped the container onto the floor next to the bed, rinsed out his mouth from the tap, and staggered up to the ops bay. The door was locked, and there was no answer to his chimes; Lister decided that Cat must want some privacy. Thinking back to his attempts at cheering Cat up with knock-knock jokes the day before, he couldn't really blame the creature. Lister made his way to the midsection to have his brekkie. The table was oddly devoid of a breakfast tray, and he peeked into the kitchen, looking for Kryten. He sighed at the absence of the mechanoid, and started to drum his fingers on his chest, pondering.

"Oh, there you are, Mister Lister!" Lister jumped slightly at Kryten's voice and turned. Kryten stood behind him, holding a breakfast tray that showed evidence of having been made much earlier and shoved in the refrigerator. The cornflakes were soggy to the point of decomposition, and the onions sagged depressingly on top. "Here is your breakfast... ah... er..." Kryten waggled his way over to the table, setting the tray on it. Lister's eyes narrowed as he noted Kryten's too-easily-detectable unease.

"Thanks, Kryters. Eh, what's up?"

"Up?" Kryten asked, far too quickly. "Oh, nothing, nothing at all. Everything is lovely. Lovely as normal. What would make you think anything is up?"

Lister walked over to Kryten, not sitting. "I can tell summit's up. Something wrong with Cat, innit? What's wrong?"

"No, sir; Cat's actually doing," Kryten's eyes flicked nervously in the direction of the ops room, "much better, I think."

Something else was nagging at the back of Lister's mind. He tried to replay, in his mind, the walk from his room, the visit to the ops room, the walk to the midsection - something was off, something subtle. Suddenly, it hit him. He had not been insulted this morning. "Where's Rimmer?"

Kryten jumped slightly at the question. "Oh, he's... keeping Cat... company."

"And Cat's doing _better_?" The only way he could think of that Rimmer's company would make Cat feel better involved a larger range of torture machinery than was standard issue for JMC landing vehicles.

"Yes, I think so." Kryten's jelly-rubber lips were trembling.

Lister sighed. "Kryten, just tell me what is going on, would you?"

Kryten broke down. "Oh, Mister Lister, sir, I just didn't know what to _do_! Cat was doing worse and worse... he was delirious. We haven't seen the least sign of any Cat-life since we started looking, and I was so terribly afraid that he wouldn't make it! And Mister Rimmer's hard-light drive is supposed to be almost undamageable - Legion promised..."

Lister grabbed Kryten's shoulder plates. "Kryten! What did you _do_?" He shook them, to make his point a little more urgent.

Kryten was almost blubbering at that point. "I... lured Mister Rimmer down to the ops room, and locked him in with the Cat. I thought that the Cat could take it from there." He gave a little mechano-sob and looked at his feet.

Lister yelled something incoherent and banged his fists on Kryten's shoulder plates. He ran to the ops room, and started to stab randomly at the keypad. Luckily, Kryten had set it to the very cryptic 1-2-3-4-5, and the door hissed open after only a few minutes of Lister banging at it.

The ops room had only emergency lighting on, and the light from the corridor cast a sickly rectangle of light into the room. The light fell across a snoozing, purring Cat, wearing nothing but a sheet pulled over his waist; despite the greenish cast of the light, he looked his normal healthy and suave self, not the wasted creature he had been the last few days. He opened his eyes and blinked sleepily at Lister's outline. He raised his head slightly, grinned at Lister, and gave him a wink. He then put his head back on the pillow and started his purry snore again.

"Cat, mate! Where's Rimmer?" But Cat was happily asleep, and did not look like he wanted to be any other way any time soon. Lister walked into the room, and suddenly found the answer to his question, lying in a pile of shredded blue uniform on the floor behind the examination table.

It took Lister several weeks to forgive Kryten for his 'plan' to make Cat well again. It took him almost as long to forgive Rimmer the goofily broad grin that was on his face when he staggered out of the ops room.


	2. Fault

"Look, why are you actin' like it's _my_ fault?" Lister panted as he ran down the metal ladder to the cargo bay floor. Ever since Rimmer had awakened from his cat-pheremone-enhanced post-coital stupor, he had been stomping through the ship, yelling at Cat and Kryten and Lister and the computer and a perfectly unoffending coffee press, not listening to a word Lister tried to say to him, becoming angrier and angrier the more he fumed. He was now in a towering rage, and Lister was getting quite sick of it.

A crash reverberated through the storage bay as Rimmer kicked a barrel of fuel over. Lister winced and kept an eye on the barrel. If it started leaking, he would have more to worry about than Rimmer having a shitfit, and that was turning out to be plenty.

"It's all of your bloody smegging twats' fault!" Rimmer yelled, slamming his fist into one of the cargo bay walls. It did not give, and he grabbed his fist between his legs and hopped around for half a minute, swearing a blue streak that would have had him in stasis for the next five missions, back on the Hollister-captained Red Dwarf they used to inhabit. Lister found it particularly frustrating to try to get a word in edgewise, as Rimmer did not have to breathe; not a moment's pause came between the stream of invective and the continuation of the thought. "That fecking rusty sodding toilet-cleaning bastard of a junked-up mechanoid would not have bloody well smegging done anything without _your_ OK, would he, Listy? Oh, I'm sorry - _Mister Lister_?" He mimicked the andriod's accent in a bellow.

Lister sighed and rubbed his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. "Look, mate, I had nothing to do with it. I'm really sorry that..."

"..._I got fucked by a cat_?" Rimmer finished. He picked up a crate of hot mango pickle and threw it against the stubborn wall. It shattered into wooden splinters, jars of pickle rolling and bouncing. Lister winced, hoping that the glass jars survived the impact intact. That crate had been a terrific find, and he was counting on that spicy condiment to help him through any future meals of asteroidal lichen casserole.

"Are you done throwin' things, Rimmeh?" Lister yelled, somewhat irked by the potential destruction of his food supplies.

Rimmer turned to face him, his chest heaving for no good reason Lister could think of. "I don't know, miladdio - are you done with enforced bestiality?"

Lister crossed his arms. "Look, mate, it's done. Kryten shouldn't've done it, and I wish I coulda stopped him - but I couldn't, and he did. Cat's alive..."

"More's the pity," Rimmer interjected. Lister barged right ahead.

"...so what's done is done. We're not goin' to have to deal with that again, so why not let it go?"

"Because it _is_ going to happen again!" Rimmer yelled, walking up close to Lister. Hologrammatic spit flew from his mouth, and Lister winced - but it disappeared before it hit him, so he smiled slightly and faced the hologram coolly as Rimmer continued to rage. "The next time anything goes off, the next time we need a bit of meat to toss to the wolves, it'll be Arnold prat-boy Rimmer with his hard-light drive who will be on the bad end of the ippy-dippy, won't it?"

Lister sighed. He was getting heartily tired of this tantrum. "And how will swearin' and hittin' things help that any?"

Rimmer stared at him, speechless, his nostrils flared to the point where Lister could park his space-bike within. Lister relished this moment of silence, then plunged ahead. "When you're done havin' your tantrum, come on up." He walked grimly back up the metal staircase to the sound of a hard-light boot contacting the wall with a reverberating clang.

Lister marched up to his room and sat there, firmly reading a comic. Cat was napping on the other bunk; he woke up after a few minutes and stretched lazily, his yawn baring his sharp incisors. "Is misplaced-underarm-hair still yellin' about in the hold?"

Lister nodded absently. "Yeah," he muttered. He had not asked Cat about what had happened, and Cat had not volunteered anything; he probably would consider that as odd as an offer to discuss that morning's round of toast. Lister was torn; he was horribly curious, to an extent that worried him, about what exactly had happened, but the idea of actually knowing made him sick to his stomach. He stole a sidelong glance at Cat, wondering if those sharp teeth had punctured a hard-light shoulder, if that rough cat-tongue had kissed, or if he had just bent the other man over and taken... Lister concentrated hard on his comic book. He had read the dialog bubble three times without understanding a word, and he was determined to actually move to the next one after the fourth rereading. Oh. 'Die now.' That was pretty straightforward.

Cat rolled out of the bunk and to his feet with characteristic grace and aplomb. "You monkeys are strange!" he yowled. He walked over to the mirror and arranged his hair with a few flicks of a brush. "I mean, I'm the one who should be hurtin' here! Havin' to do the nasty with Mister Personality?" He sighed. "Goalpost head should be grateful! I mean," he turned to face Lister, gesturing with the brush in one hand, "the chance to have _this_?" He indicated his body.

Lister looked firmly down at his comic, trying hard not to think of the _that_ that Cat was indicating airily poised behind the man raging downstairs, thrusting, the noises he would make... Lister firmly moved his thoughts to another track. "It did save your life."

Cat laughed and turned back to the mirror. "Die or diddle a smeghead - not much of a choice there! But beachball head took care of that, didn't he?" Cat patted his hair and straightened his jacket, making kissy-lips at his reflection, then turning back to Lister. "Hey, buddy, I'm up to my shift - come with. It's borin' as hell up there."

Lister smiled at Cat. "In a bit, man."

Cat shrugged. "Right. Awww, yeah!" He danced out of the room. Lister's grin stayed put for a moment. Self-centered and vain though Cat was, he was quite fun, when he was in the mood to be, and had the offhand, tenuous affection for Lister that Frankenstein had. The kind of affection that Lister was sure would not remain for long in the absence of dishes of milk and tummy rubs, but as those were not going anywhere, it was a relatively stable point in Lister's life.

Unlike Rimmer, who was as unstable as a life factor could be. Well, that was not quite true. He could be counted on to run from danger and betray his friends. He could be counted on to whinge the most when things were off. He could be counted on to cock up anything he touched. So why did Lister keep going back for him when he had gotten himself into a scrape that was so unequivocally deserved that Saint Peter himself, if present, would elbow Lister and tell him to just leave well enough alone? Why did he keep trying to be friends with the man? Why did he spend so much time soothing feathers that were far to rapid to be ruffled? Why the smeg was the thought of Cat having sex with him simultaneously so alluring and disgusting?

These thoughts were mercifully cut short by the appearance of the man himself. He stormed into the room, kicked Cat's bedclothes off of the bunk, and flopped into it with a muttered oath, staring at the roof of the bunk niche.

"Feelin' better?" asked Lister, putting his comic down.

"Does it matter?" Rimmer asked through his teeth.

"Does to me." Lister shrugged and walked over, pulling a chair out from the table to sit near the bunk.

"I don't know why. It's not like I can go anywhere. What, just take a walk around the block when I'm irate? Maybe jump ship and hook up with another company of rats in a barrel?"

"C'mon, man, that's future-us smeg. Sure, it's a bit tight, but we're not rats, right?"

"We'd be better off if we were. We could work out our tempers on exercise wheels."

Lister grinned at the mental image. "There's probably an AR program with one on one of the derelicts."

"Waiting to use the AR machine while you finish having sex is like waiting in line for the bathroom behind my brothers. Frustrating and pointless, and I might as well pee out of the window."

Lister raised his eyebrows. "I don' use the AR machine for sex anymore, man! I've matured, like."

Rimmer flopped his head on the side to look at Lister. He raised one eyebrow, flaring his nostrils slightly. "Since when?" he asked, his voice lifting into a higher register as sarcasm dripped off of it.

"Since... well, lately! Besides, AR sex isn' as good as real-life sex. That's why it didn't work for..." Lister bit his lip, desperately, too late.

Rimmer resumed glaring upwards. "Right."

Lister sighed. "Look, man, again - I'm sorry. I didn't know anything about it. Kryten did it while I was asleep. I was furious, really. I'm never gonna let him do anything like that again."

"Why not? It seems to have worked out _marvelously_ well for everyone involved but me, no?"

Lister thought about that question. He was, indeed, furious at Kryten. He was glad Cat was all right again, but would he have chosen that if given the option? Well, no matter - it was done and in the past, and the future Lister had to worry about now was complicated enough. Yes, why was he feeling so protective of Rimmer? He leaned forward and put his arms on his thighs, sucking his lower lip into his mouth as he pondered. He found himself studying Rimmer's profile - the petulant mouth, the absurd hair, the cavernous nostrils, the small scar on his jawline, the strange division of cheek and chin.

Rimmer turned to Lister at the abrupt silence, and seemed disconcerted to see the other man staring at him so intently. He turned back to stare at the ceiling, but Lister noted that his demeanor seemed more confused than irritated. Well, that in itself was a good step. "Maybe I'm jealous," Lister said with a grin.

Rimmer frowned at the ceiling. "Terrific. That's all I need. To be totty for everyone on the ship with a penis." But there was no venom in his voice.

Lister grinned and grabbed Rimmer's shoulder. "I didn't say I wanted to sleep with you, you twonk." He let go of the shoulder as Rimmer's face scrunched in distaste. Lister stood and retrieved his comic, and sat back down next to Rimmer. He read, keeping the corner of his eye on Rimmer. The other man seemed lost in thought, and Lister found this an improvement over a smashing-things rage. He continued to read, glancing up now and then to judge Rimmer's mood. He glanced at those lips, and wondered if Cat had kissed them.

Lister rather liked the idea that he had not.


End file.
